Schmidt Number: S-5315

On-line since: 30th September, 2015

2.
— Exposition of relations to the Christian tradition: the
Gospels and Genesis.— Development
of the anthroposophical understanding of Christianity.

I
have briefly indicated what were the directing forces during
the two first periods of the anthroposophic movement; and
before going on to describe the third period and what took
place in it, I should like, as a basis, to enter more closely
into certain features of the first and second periods. For as a
matter of fact, in spite of all that has been said by way of
explanation, it is still possible to raise the question: What
grounds were there for the anthroposophic movement finding
itself involved in a connection, — a tolerably external
connection it is true — with the theosophic movement?

This question in particular, being a very intricate one, can
only find its answer if we examine certain distinctive features
in the evolution of the anthroposophic movement.

Taking, to begin with, the first period, which lasted down to
about 1907, I might characterize as more or less its
distinctive feature, that it was engaged in gradually laying
the fundament' for a substantive science of the spirit.

Anyone who tries to look back into those days with the aid of
the actual documents, will see, that during that time, bit by
bit, in lectures, or lecture-cycles, — and also in what
those who assisted worked out further for themselves, —
the material was gradually brought to light, — the
substantive basic material of spiritual science, and the
lines on which it must anthroposophically be conceived. —
This period ends, (such things are, of course, only
approximate; but that is the case with the historic evolution
of everything) — it ends approximately, I might say, with
the publication of my Occult Science.— The
book Occult Science actually appeared in print some year
and a half later; but the essential sub-stance of it, the
delivery of the essential substance contained in it, belongs
altogether to this first period of anthroposophic effort.

Throughout this period, down to the year 1905 or 1906, there
was every justification for a quite definite hope: the hope,
namely, that the anthroposophic substance might gradually come
to form altogether the life-substance of the Theosophical
Society. Down to the years 1905, 1906, it was impossible to say
that, gradually, in the course of a quite natural evolution,
the theosophic society might not develop into an anthroposophic
one. — It was possible to hope so, for the reason, that
during these years, in all matters of outward activity, one of
the most influential personages in the Theosophical Society,
Mrs. Annie Besant, exhibited a certain tolerance, and
unmistakably aimed at allowing tendencies of various directions
to work alongside one another. That was unmistakably the case,
down to about 1905 or 1906.

Now, during this period, one certainly — if one indulged
in no illusions — could not fail to see, that such a very
leading personage in the Theosophical Society, as Mrs. Annie
Besant, had very primitive notions of modern scientific method.
Her notions were primitive. But, nevertheless, despite all the
marks of amateurishness that were thus introduced into her
books, yet, all the same, from the fact that in course of time
the theosophic society came, as Theosophical Society, to have
its centre in London, and that this Theosophical Society had in
course of time become nurtured, one might say, with the wisdom
of the East, there was, from all this, a whole assortment of
wisdom piled. up in the people who belonged to the society,
— undigested wisdom for the most part, and which very
often, indeed, existed in the form of most curious notions.
But, — putting aside the fact that these notions often
went so far as to bear no vestige of re-semblance to their
origin and true meaning, — nevertheless, through books
such as Mrs. Besant's Ancient Wisdom, or more
particularly The Perfecting of Man, or even her
Esoteric Christianity, there did flow something which,
— traditional as the manner of conveying it was, —
yet had its source in ancient fountainhead of wisdom, —
even though the channels were not always unexceptionable,
through which this stream of ancient wisdom had descended until
it came into these books and lectures. Such, then, was the
state of things at that time.

And, on the other hand, one must always keep in sight the fact
that, outside these particular circles, there was no interest
what ever to be found in the world of the day for real
spiritual research. There remained simply the one fact: that
amongst those who had, so to speak, strayed into this
particular group of people, a possibility might be awarded for
awakening an interest in genuine, modern spiritual science

In
this first period especially, however, there were all sorts of
things to contend with. I won't weary you with all the numerous
societies which simply borrowed the name of theosophy, —
societies which at bottom had uncommonly little to do with any
serious spiritual strivings. Striving the people were
certainly, many of them; but it was a striving that in part was
a very egoistic, in part, an un-commonly trifling one. Trifling
side-streams of this sort, however, frequently assumed the name
of ‘theosophical societies’. I need only remind you of the
so-called theosophic groups which were fairly widespread,
namely, in Central Europe, in Germany and Austria, and also in
Switzerland, and which gave themselves the name of ‘branches’,
though all they really had in common with the Theosophical
Society was in an extremely watered-down form, and. saturated
again with every conceivable kind of often very foolish
occultism.

A
person who played a considerable part in the societies of this
sort, and one who will be well known to you too still by name
— or at least to many of you, — was Franz Hartmann.
The depth of ‘spirit’, however, and the depth of ‘earnestness’,
so-termed, which existed in these trifling societies,
will be apparent merely from an illustration I may give you of
the cynical character of the leading personage, whose name I
have just mentioned. This gentleman was talking once in company
with just a few people, but where I too was present, and said
... (these things have a real psychologic interest also, for
one sees from them the kind of thing to which the human soul
can come!): — ‘Oh,’ — said he, — ‘there was
that quarrel once in the Theosophical Society about that man,
Judge, in America.’ — (I won't go into the quarrel except
to say that the dispute turned upon whether certain messages
sent out by Judge had emanated from real initiate sources,
namely, from higher personages called. ‘Masters’). —
‘Well,’ — said Franz Hartmann,’ — that affair with
Judge; I know all about that! He sent out those “Masters'
Letters” in America; he came over to India at the time.
We were in India, at headquarters; and he wanted to make
himself an authority in America, and be able to say that he was
commissioned by the Higher Initiates; and so he wanted to have
Masters' Letters. Thereupon I said to him: — '(so Franz
Hartmann told the story) ‘Oh, Masters' Letters, — I'll
write some for you. — To which Judge answered: Well, but
that won't do; for then I can't state that they are Letters
from the Masters; for letters of that sort come flying down
upon one out of the air; they take shape magically, and flutter
down on one's head; and I must he able to say so.’ —
Whereupon Franz Hartmann said to Judge, — the story is of
his own telling! — ‘That's easy to manage! — Judge
was quite a little fellow, and I said to him,’ (so he told us),
— ‘You stand on the floor, and I'll get up on a chair and
let the letter drop down on your head. — And then he
could say with a good conscience that the letters he sent out
had come flying down on his head out of the air!’

Well, that is only an extreme instance of this kind of thing,
which is by no means so very rare in the world. But, as I said,
I won't weary you with an account of these
trifling-societies; I merely want to point out that,
during the first period especially, the fact that the
anthroposophic movement ran alongside the theosophic one, made
it in a way necessary to defend one's position before modern
scientific thought.

I
don't know whether those who joined the anthroposophic movement
later on, and who studied Anthroposophy then as scientists from
a scientific aspect in this, its more developed third
period, ... I don't know whether these people have taken due
note of the fact, that a struggle with the modern scientific
way of thinking, and one of a quite peculiar kind, took place
precisely during the first period of the anthroposophic
movement. I will give you two or three instances. They are
instances only of what went on in all kinds of matters, but
they will show you that, at that time more particularly, the
theosophic movement was strongly affected by what I described
two or three days ago as a special feature of modern education,
— namely, deference to so-called scientific
authority.

This deference to scientific authority had made its way into
the Theosophical Society above all. One could see, for
instance, how Mrs. Besant, in particular, attempted in her
books to bring in all sorts of references to the science of the
day, — things which had no bearing whatever upon
spiritual science; such, for instance, as Weissmann's Theory of
Heredity; — they were brought into her books as being
confirmations.

I
can remember, too, how in Munich, when we had got so far as
founding a sort of centre for the anthroposophic movement
there, ... as you know, centres gradually came to be founded
for the movement: the one in Berlin, and in Munich, Stuttgart,
Cassel, Dusseldorf, Cologne, Hamburg, in Hanover, in Leipzig,
and in Austria, the Vienna centre, and in a way, too, the one
at Prague. In short, various centres came to be formed; and at
the time when the centre was being formed in Munich, there were
a great number there of these homeless souls, who were already
organized in a sort of way; they already belonged to some
society or other. Well, putting quite aside now the
trifling-societies of the Hartmann stamp, I was going to
tell you that when we were founding the branch at . Munich, we
had all the time to deal with these various big and little
groups which existed there.

There was one group, the Ketterl. The Ketterl
consisted of regular men of learning. The business of these
people in the Ketterl was, when anything whatever was
stated in the field of spiritual science, to supply natural
science proofs of it. Their aim, so to speak, was to start with
just the natural science views of the day, and thence simply
mount up higher to the things, say, that Anthroposophy
describes. If Anthroposophy talked of an ether-body,
they would say to themselves: Natural science has succeeded in
determining some particular form of structure for the atoms or
molecules. And now one must set to work and find out how this
structure might become partly more complex, but partly also
thinner in its combinations; and so gradually proceed from the
molecular structure of physical bodies to the molecular
structure of the ether. And then one would be able to apply the
same kind of calculations to the processes of the ether, as one
applies to the pro-cesses of the physical world. And nothing
was, strictly speaking, allowed to ‘go through’ in the
Ketterl except what bore a natural science visum on its
anthroposophic pass.

The
treatises written by the members of the Ketterl,— for they wrote treatises as well, — did
not really dier much from the scientific treatises of the
theoretic physicists of that period; only that with them the
formula and definitions, etc., did not stand for processes in
the spectrum, or in the electro-magnetic field, but for
processes in the etheric field, or the astral field.

There was nothing to be done: the whole connection dissolved in
mutual satisfaction, or dissatisfaction; and in the end one
lost all contact with these protagonists of the natural science
standpoint.

Not
so very different, however, from these Ketterl
performances were the labours of a man who played a great part
in the Theosophical Society and had been an intimate friend,
too, of Blavatsky, — a man who was invariably present
whenever such things came under discussion. This was Dr.
Huebbe-Schleiden; the same who for a long while issued the
Sphinx. He, too, was altogether ‘out’ to bring a natural
science way of thinking to the proof of what his feelings
recognized as theosophy. — I still remember how he
fetched me from the station, the first time in Hanover, when I
had to give a lecture there. — It was the first
anthroposophic lecture that I gave in Hanover, and was an
ex-position of Goethe's Story of the Green Serpent and the
Lovely Lily.— Then he took me out with him;
he lived a little way outside the town, and there was a ride of
about half an hour in the tram. He began at once, with immense
enthusiasm, to explain to me that anything like positive
spiritual knowledge could not possibly maintain itself before
the more intelligent spirits of mankind, unless the things were
proved in the same way as one is accustomed to have them proved
in text-books of physics or other sciences. Then he brought his
two forefingers into play; and so it went on for the whole
half-hour, he all the while describing movements with the tips
of his forefingers, to represent the supposed motions of the
atoms: ‘Look; that must go so, and then so; and then one
can see: in the one incarnation the atoms are set in motion,
and then the wave-current travels on through the spiritual
worlds; and now then, one must calculate how the
wave-current travels through the spiritual worlds; and then it
all becomes changed, and you have the next incarnation.’
— Till really one felt oneself back again in the
lecture-halls, with the lecturer explaining to one the various
wave-currents for red and yellow and blue and green; it was all
of a piece with these wave-currents for the transit of the
souls through their various incarnation'.

He
had a friend, — who afterwards, however, became an
exceedingly good, sensible, faithful member of the
Anthroposophic Society, — to whom he used always to send
his ex-positions, and who possessed, amongst other qualities,
that of greatly valuing these expositions. But every now and
then the humour of it tickled him, and he once told me that he
had again just received half a cwt. of wisdom for-warded to
Munich from Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden. They were always very bulky
letters that were dispatched from Hanover to Munich!

Well, the peculiar stamp; I was going to say, of this way of
thinking, might be seen in the discussions that for a long time
were carried on in the Theosophical Society over the so-called
Permanent Atom. This Permanent Atom was an appalling thing! But
it was taken uncommonly seriously. For the people, you see, who
felt the authoritativeness of modern science, could not in the
least understand why something, at any rate, that in words at
least sounds the same as modern science, shouldn't be
introduced into spiritual science. So they said: Take a man who
is living in one incarnation and then passes on to the next;
his physical body certainly falls to pieces; one single atom
only remains, and that goes on through the time between
death and new birth; and this one atom then makes its
appearance in the new incarnation. That is the Permanent Atom,
and goes on through the whole of the incarnations.

Such a thing seems like a joke to you to-day; but you can have
no idea with what solemn earnestness these things were carried
on during the first period especially, when Anthroposophy was
in its beginnings, and how exceedingly difficult it was to meet
the argument: — Why, what's the use of all theosophy if
it can't be scientifically proved! Not a human being will have
anything to say to it unless one can prove it scientifically!
— Indeed, during this conversation in the tram, it was
laid down as a maxim, that one's expositions must be in such a
style that an ordinary sixth form schoolboy can understand
theosophy just in the same way as he understands logic. That
was what my escort demanded.

Then I arrived at his house; and he took me up into the loft.
— And now I will ask those who now, in the latest period
of the anthroposophic movement, are endeavouring to combat the
Atomic doctrine, to guess what I found at that time in the loft
of Dr. Huebbe-Schleiden's house in Hanover? — We went up
a narrow stairs and there, above, in the loft, ... But in
telling the story one can't of course say often enough that he
was a most kind and charming, and really quite sensible,
altogether nice old gentleman! ... up there, lying in the loft,
were monster models of Atoms! They were made of wire, however,
— very complicated. One model in each case represented
the atom of some physical substance: Hydrogen or Oxygen; and
the next model, which was again more complicated, represented
the atom as an etheric substance; and the third model, which
was more complicated still, was the atom of the astral
substance. And if you take up certain books by one of the
leaders of the Theosophical Society, — Leadbeater's
books, — you will find in them magnificent diagrams of
models such as these. It is a fact which I wish just to
mention, for the consideration more particularly of those
amongst us who are making war on the Atomic doctrine, that this
same Atomic doctrine was never anywhere in such high bloom as
amongst those who, so to speak, came into our ranks out of the
Theosophical Society. And when the younger members, such as Dr.
Kolisko and the others in our Stuttgart laboratories, wage war
to-day upon the Atom, one would like just to remind them that,
in those days, there were people with whom one really wouldn't
have known how possibly to get from one incarnation to the
next, if one hadn't had at least one permanent atom.

This is just an illustration of the very strong authority
exercised by so-called scientific thought in these particular
circles. Scientific thought, of the natural science kind, these
people were quite capable of! They simply couldn't think that
anything could possibly have any value unless it were conceived
on the lines of natural science thought. — And so on this
side too, again, there was no real under-standing. It was only
as the second period of the anthroposophic movement began to
draw on, that there came to be, in the circles at least that
had entered our ranks, a gradual decline in this pursuit of the
Atom; and the people passed on, little by little, to those
things that continued further to be cultivated in the
anthroposophic movement. — On the other hand it must be
said, that the people who did not trouble very much about this
pursuit of the Atom, and to whom modern science was after all a
matter of more or less indifference, who had only, as homeless
souls, found a stimulus in the theosophic movement, —
that these people were decidedly more open-minded. And every
time, for instance, that I stayed in Munich, I was able to
deliver a lecture of a more intimate character in a circle that
gathered round Frau von Schewitsch, a lady who had formerly
been a great friend of Blavatsky's, and was then living in
Munich. There it was certainly easier; for there one found a
real striving of the soul.

I
don't wish to uphold the one circle nor to disparage the other;
I only wish to instance the various things on one side and
another with which the anthroposophic movement had to deal.

Only just consider, though! that, at that time, the first
demand we met with, and amongst our own ranks too, was that
everything taught in Anthroposophy should be justified by the
aid and methods of the natural science thought of those days!
— And yet that was mild, com-pared with what is demanded
of one by the outside world nowadays! My dear friends, a good
number of you have to-day heard a lecture from Dr. Bluemel; and
I think you will have been well able to understand his clear
expositions, and have carried away a certain impression. Rut
suppose there had been someone sitting there who said: ‘Oh,
those explanations of his! What do I care about all that! I
don't believe in it; I don't accept any of it; I won't examine
the proofs of it!’ — And another person were to say:
‘Well, but just look and see whether the things are true; test
them with your common sense and the faculties of your own
soul!’ — ‘That, I am not prepared to do,’ answers the
other. ‘I can't trouble for the moment about that! It may be
right or it may be wrong: I won't go into that question; but I
call upon Dr. Bluemel to betake him to a psychological
laboratory; and there I will test him with my psychological
apparatus and see whether he is a mathematician or not.’
— That is, of course, rubbish, and very thin rubbish too;
but it is exactly the same as the demand made by the outer
world of to-day, that an investigator of anthroposophic truths
should let himself be tested in a psychologic laboratory in
order to determine whether he has a right to state the results
of his research and to expound them. It is exactly the
same.

To-day one may make the most nonsensical statements, one may
talk sheer nonsense, and people don't see it. Even those people
who are indignant don't see that it is sheer nonsense; they
think it is just deliberate malice, or something of the kind.
For they simply can't conceive that the state of society could
possibly permit of one's being an official representative of
science, and talking in reality utter nonsense. The people
can't conceive such a thing. So chaotic, in fact, is the
spiritual life of our day.

The
things, therefore, which it will be necessary to take into
consideration when discussing the life-conditions of the
anthroposophic movement will be altogether examples drawn from
the phenomena and from the actuating forces of civilized life
at the present day. Things of the kind, such as I am here
describing, must be understood by every person who wishes to be
acquainted with the life-conditions of the anthroposophic
movement.

Well, undeterred by all these conflicting things, the work of
the first period, as I was saying, was to set forth the
principal human truths, the principal cosmic truths. And my
Occult Science represents a sort of compendium of all
that had been taught in the anthroposophic movement down to
that time. As to the way the work was accomplished, it went I
might say as well as it went, simply for the reason that there
was never an abstract, but always a concrete will behind it,
— because one never aimed, so to speak, at more than just
what the course of circumstances gave one to aim at.

For
example, let me give you a case like this. — We started
in those days, as you know, a paper, quite at the beginning of
the anthroposophical movement: the Lucifer-Gnosis. It
was called Lucifer to begin with, and then, after five
or six numbers had appeared, a Vienna periodical called
enosis wanted to amalgamate with it. As another little
fact, I may mention that I wanted simply to express the
external union of the two papers by entitling the sub-sequent
paper Lucifer cum Gnosis. Well, that, for
in-stance, was a 'thing to which Huebbe-Schleiden simply
wouldn't consent. He thought it would imply a sort of unnatural
marriage bond between Lucifer and Gnosis. Lucifer cum
enosis: one couldn't possibly say such a thing! Well, I
didn't care; and so we called it Lucifer-Gnosis, and
hyphenated them. — They were sharp enough in those days
when it came to keeping an eye on us!

Well, this paper, Lucifer-Gnosis was started. We began,
of course, with quite a small number of subscribers; but the
list grew with comparatively great rapidity; and we never had
really a deficit, for we only printed as many copies as we were
about able to sell; and as for distribution, the
office-apparatus was as follows: — When one number of the
paper had been written and printed, the printed copies were
returned to me at my house in big packets, and ‘Frau Doctor’
and I ourselves stuck on the labels; I wrote the addresses
myself; and then we each took a clothes-basket and. carried the
things to the post. We found it worked very well. My business
was to write the things and to give the lectures. ‘Frau Doctor’
did all the organization of the society, but without any
secretary; for if she had had a secretary she would. only have
had to work for him too. So we did it quite alone, and never
aimed at more than could be aimed at, — quite concretely.
One went just as many steps forward as the actual circumstances
put before one. For instance, the clothes-baskets we carried
were not bigger than so that we just didn't quite collapse
under them ... only nearly; we simply had to make the journey
oftener, as the subscribers' list got bigger.

Well, after we had performed this interesting occupation for a
while, Lucifer-Gnosis then passed over to Altmann's
publishing firm in Leipzig. And then, Lucifer-Gnosis
ceased to appear; not for the reason that it couldn't carry on
any longer, for it had at the time many more subscribers than
it needed; only I had no more time to write it. In fact, by
then, the applications for lectures, and the whole spiritual
administration altogether of the society, took up a great deal
of time, — the whole thing, you know, slowly and
gradually grew and developed; — and the consequence was
that Lucifer-Gnosis failed to make its appearance.
First, there were great gaps, — the January number
appeared in December; and then from a year it came to a year
and a half; and the subscribers made an awful fuss. Altmann,
the publisher, got nothing but letters of com-plaint. So that I
saw no way out except to tell him: ‘We simply must shut up
altogether, and tell the sub-scribers that, however long they
wait, they won't get any more!’

Well, that of course, too, was inherent in the course of the
movement; one never aimed at more than the concrete advance
brought with it. And that is one of the life-conditions of a
spiritual society. To post up far-reaching ideals in so many
words is the very worst thing for a spiritual society.
Programme-making is the very worst thing for a spiritual
society.

In
this first period, then, the work was simply so carried on
that, to begin with, by 1907 — 8 — 9, the
groundwork was laid for a spiritual society suited to this
modern age.

Then came the second period, in which the relations with
natural science were in the main settled. — The
theologians had not yet come on the field in any way. They were
everywhere so tight-seated in their saddles that they didn't
concern themselves about the thing at all.

The
discussions with natural science being over, one could now turn
to the other task before one. This was the discussion of
relations with the Gospels with Genesis and the Christian
tradition generally: with Christianity, as such.

The
line was already sketched out in my book Christianity as
Mystical Fact, which lies at the very start, for it had
come out in 1902. But the elaboration, so to speak, of the
anthroposophical understanding of Christianity, the building up
of such an understanding was, in the main, the business of this
second epoch, on to about the year 1914. It was the time when
the lecture-cycles were held in Ham-burg, Cassel, Berlin,
Basle, Berne, Munich, Stuttgart, on various portions of the
Christian tradition. — For instance, at that time, too,
there was worked out, amongst other things, what only exists so
far on paper as a general sketch, in The Spiritual Guidance
of Man and of Mankind.

It
was the time, therefore, when in the main the Christian side of
Anthroposophy was worked out with reference to the Christian
tradition historically handed down.

And
then, in this period, came what I might call the first
extension of Anthroposophy towards the side of Art, with
the performance of the Mystery-Dramas in Munich. All
this, again, came strictly under the sign of not attempting
more than arose out of actual circumstances. — And in
this period there came then the incidents which led to what,
for the Anthroposophists, was really a matter of indifference,
namely, the exclusion from the Theosophical Society. For, as I
said yesterday evening, to Anthroposophy it could be a matter
of indifference whether she were included. or excluded; for she
went her own road from the very first; — those who chose
to go that same road could go with her. And Anthroposophy from
the first had never troubled herself in any way internally, as
regards her spiritual investigations, about what had been
produced by the Theosophical Society. Only, even on the
external road, it became ever more and more difficult to keep
company.

At
first there was undoubtedly a hope, from the circumstances,
some of which I have indicated, — a hope namely, that the
tide of theosophic movement as united in the Theosophical
Society, might really become entirely anthroposophic. And
amongst the other circumstances which seemed to justify such a
hope, there was also this: — that, as a fact, the
peculiar manner in which research was pursued in the
Theosophical Society, led to severe disillusionments on the
part, especially, of those persons whose judgmatic powers were
at all of a higher order.

And
here I am obliged to confess as my own experience, the first
and second time when I went to London, that the behaviour of
the leading personages was that of people who were extremely
sceptical in their dealings with each other, who felt
themselves on altogether insecure ground, but all the same
wouldn't abandon this ground, because they did not know where
else to look for security. — There were many
disillusioned people, very plentifully filled with doubts,
especially amongst the leaders of the Theosophical Society. And
undoubtedly a momentous factor in the developments which took
place in the Theosophical Society was the remarkable change
which Mrs. Annie Besant underwent between the years 1900 and,
say, 1907.

She
had at first a certain tolerance. She never, I think,
understood anything at all of this Anthroposophy which had come
on the scenes. — I don't think she understood it at all.
Rut she didn't interfere with it. She even, in the beginning,
defended it against the hard-and-fast dogmatists, — that
is to say, she defended its rights of existence. One can't say
anything else: for that is the fact.

But
now I have something to say, which I beg may be very carefully
borne in mind in the Anthroposophical Society too. With any
such spiritual society, — and such as the theosophical
one was, too, at that time, — there is a certain sort of
purely personal ambition, certain sympathies and antipathies of
a purely personal tinge, which are absolutely
incompatible with it. And yet there are such numbers of
cases precisely of this kind, where someone really has his will
set on some particular thing! He wills it from some
‘subter-ground’ of his being, — wills, for instance, to
make an idol of a particular person. He wills it on some ground
that lies in the under-regions of his being. What is impelling
him, the emotional impulse, — it may be perhaps a
brain-emotion, — is something that he won't admit to
himself. But he begins now to weave an artificial astral aura
round this person whom he is bent on idolizing: such a person
is very ‘advanced’.1 And if one wants to say
something very special in addition: ‘Oh, he, or she, knows
three, not to say four, of their former earth-lives! in fact,
they have talked to me about my own former earth-life! Ah, that
person knows a very great deal!’ And then comes a most
spiritual interpretation of what — to use Nietzsche's
words — is ‘humanly all too human’. Were one to give it a
humanly-all-too-human designation, one would simply say, ...
well, perhaps not downright, ‘I am quite silly about that
person!’ but, without going so far, one might, at any rate,
say, ‘I find him, or her, attractive. There's no denying it: I
certainly find him, or her, very attractive!’ And then all
would be well, — even in an occult society. — Of
course Max Seiling, for instance, was in a way extremely
entertaining, especially when he skipped about so excitingly on
the piano; it was pleasant to go to tea with him, and so forth.
Well and good; and if people had confessed this to themselves
it would have been wiser; if only they had confessed to
themselves: ‘I like that sort of thing.’ — Wiser than
extolling him to the skies, as they did in the Munich
group.

All
such things, you see, are in direct contradiction to the
life-conditions of any society of this kind. Yet precisely a
model example of how to fall into this sort of thing was Mrs.
Annie Besant. For example, there turned up one day (I prefer to
tell these things more through actual examples), there turned
up one day a name. — I had never really troubled much
about the literature of the ‘Theo-sophical Society’, in fact,
I read next to nothing of this literature; and so my first
acquaintance with the name,

1 English in the original.

Bhagavan Dâs, was when I one day received a thick,
type-written manuscript. The manuscript was arranged thus: in
two columns, the left column type-written, the right one left
blank. Enclosed with it was a letter from Bhagavan Dâs (it
was about the year 1905, I think), in which he wrote that he
would like to enter into correspondence with various people
about the contents of this manuscript which he proposed to
reveal to the world. — Well, really, at that time the
anthroposophic movement had already grown so extensive that I
didn't find time at once to read this manuscript. He
said one was to write any comments one had to make on the
right-hand side, and then send it track to him. — I used
to go about a bit in those days, and I found that there were
other people as well to whom the manuscript had been sent. And
then it dawned ever more and more clearly upon me, that this
Bhagavan Dâs was, in fact ... in fact, that he was ... an
altogether occult personage, one who drew from the very depths
of all that was spiritual! This was pretty much the opinion
circulated about Bhagavan Dâs by the people round Mrs.
Besant. — Well, since the thing came from India, and he
was closely in touch with Indian headquarters, and enjoyed such
fame, — at the Amsterdam Congress, for instance, one
heard everywhere: ‘Bhagavan Dâs’, ‘Bhagavan Dâs’; it
was really as though it were a fountain gushing a perpetual
flow of wisdom! And so I decided to look at the thing. A most
appalling amateurish hotch-potch! Fichte-Philosophy,
Hegel-Philosophy, Schopenbauer-Philosophy, everything
conceivable jumbled up together without rhyme or reason! And
through the whole there ran, like the endless burden of a song,
Self and Not-Self. And then, again, there would come a
disquisition on something from Fichte, and then again, Self and
Not-Self. It was, in short, something appalling! I never
troubled about the thing again; — I didn't write anything
on the blank side. — Things, however, like this showed,
you see, how things were gradually drifting into personal
currents. For it was simply on purely personal grounds that
this particular Bhagavan Das was so lauded to the skies. You
can read his books still to-day, and you will find they bear
out the truth of what I have just said. — For, of course,
you know, he manufactured books. — Things like this
showed how the personal element became introduced into what
were ostensibly objective impulses. And once that had
come in, — and it began to come in strongly about 1905,
— then the slide inevitably went on downhill. All the
rest was, in the main, simply a consequence.

By
this I don't mean to say that in every kind of society,
if one happens to write nonsense, the whole society is bound to
go to grief. But spiritual societies are ruled by different
laws, by laws of internal necessity; and there things of this
kind must not be practised, especially not by the persons who
are leaders. Or else, you see, the downhill slide inevitably
takes place. And it did take place.

And
then came the ridiculous business at Olcott's death, —
the ridiculous business that went on then, and was even then
the beginning of the end of the ‘Theosophical Society’, —
what they called the ‘appointment by the Masters’. But that at
least could in so far be smoothed over that one could say:
Well, yes! there are one or two people, certainly, who
undoubtedly act on peculiar principles of their own, and so
bring ridiculous things into the society. — Then,
however, came the affair with Leadbeater, which I don't care to
discuss now. And then it came to picking out that boy who was
to be educated, you know, as the Christ, or to become the
Christ, and all the rest of it. And when that couldn't be
accepted by people who refused to take part in such nonsense,
then these people were excluded.

Well, the anthroposophic movement kept on its own straight
course throughout all these things, without practically
troubling itself very much about these things as a movement.
For say, you know, that in 1911, on the 24th of March, one was
engaged in studying the Spiritual Guidance of Man and of
Mankind; and on the 25th of March there came the ridiculous
reports from Adyar or somewhere, from the ‘Theosophical Society’,
one didn't on that account need, on the 25th of March, to
alter the continuation of what one had done on the 24th. The
internal course of things remained, therefore, in reality
unaffected; — that is a fact to keep firm hold of. And
one really didn't need, even at that time, to be greatly
thrilled by what proceeded from this or that quarter amongst
the leading personages in the ‘Theosophical Society’; any more
than I was at all specially overcome with astonishment when it
was reported lately that Leadbeater, — of whom you have
heard a good many other things — has now, in his old
days, become a bishop of the Old Catholics, and that one of his
associates, who in those early days was also at the Munich
Congress, has become actually an Old Catholic Archbishop. There
is — you'll agree — no cause to be astonished at
such things. For the line, by now, was not a straight
one; it was all going crooked and queer; — so why
shouldn't this happen, too?

One
didn't even need to make any special change in one's personal
relations with the people, — I mean, in actual
intercourse with them. I gave a lecture afterwards (two years
ago it was, I think), in Amsterdam; and at the end of the
lecture one of the same gentlemen came up to me, quite in the
old friendly way, who had delivered a lecture in Munich at the
Congress of 1907. He looked exactly the same as he did then;
only in the meantime he had become an Archbishop of the Old
Catholics. He wasn't wearing archbishop's robes; but he was
one.

Such were the things, in short, that went on in a certain field
of modern culture; in which, on the other hand, these homeless
souls, from internal necessity, found a very real attraction.
One must not forget that it was in this stream of movement,
nevertheless, — although one can characterize it in no
other way, — that those souls were to be found who were
the most earnestly striving after a link between the human soul
and the spiritual world. And one simply is not presenting an
honest picture of the course taken by the life of modern
culture, unless one for once puts these con-trasts really
plainly.

And
so, before going on to-morrow to describe our latest period,
and with it the life-conditions inherent in the nature of the
Anthroposophical Society, I was obliged to-day, my dear
friends, to add these few remarks for your attention.